Chicken-Fried News: If you thought legislation passed into law in Texas last year was absurd, Oklahoma Republican Sen. Rob Standridge invites you to hold his beer.

click to enlarge Chicken-Fried News: If you thought legislation passed into law in Texas last year was absurd, Oklahoma Republican Sen. Rob Standridge invites you to hold his beer.
Jerry Bennett

Taking a page out of their playbook, he’s aiming this session to get books banned from public school library shelves with a $10,000 daily bounty for as long they remain accessible to impressionable minds. You heard that correctly. A cash-starved and pandemic-weary public education system is now poised to be further drained of funds because some dumbass doesn’t want you to read books that he doesn’t want to read.

Standridge’s district includes south Oklahoma City and parts of Norman (but not Oklahoma University — imagine that).

In a statement, Standridge said, “Our education system is not the place to teach moral lessons that should instead be left up to parents and families. Unfortunately, however, more and more schools are trying to indoctrinate students by exposing them to gender, sexual and racial identity curriculums and courses. My bills will ensure these types of lessons stay at home and out of the classroom.”

Once upon a time, parents used to send their children to libraries to learn about all the things that they themselves didn’t know. It’s part of what has allowed children to flourish over the past century, learning about others, their beliefs, their practices and customs. A free flow of information has enabled our multicultural society to broaden its understanding of one another.

It’s a bizarre day in America when the last place you can go to learn is in a public school library.

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